Reclamation
by Fear the Pretty People
Summary: Winter's Rebirth: Part 2 It's been over a year since Bucky joined with the Avengers. It's been kept silent until suspicious activity alerts the team to and old enemy's return. Now they have to save the world (again), while also convincing the public that Bucky isn't a psychotic rage monster. As if that weren't enough, everyone wants to know what's going on with Captain America...


Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the story line and even it isn't that original.

A/N: This here is a warning that Bucky has quite the potty mouth in this story. I mean, he really lets loose. Has anyone else seen some of the comic book story lines where his speech bubbles are just solid blocks of censorship? Yeah, that. So here's that warning.

Also, this is the 2nd story in the Winter's Rebirth series. The first story is Now We Carry On. I don't think there is any reason to read it first but it does tell why Bucky is in the Avengers now.

Now, enjoy!

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After Bucky dumped the limp, unconscious body of the guard beside the others in the closet, he started going through the guy's pockets. He found keys, a phone, and a wallet. He left the phone, held onto the keys, and opened the wallet to see if the RFID card was in it. _Come on…_ he thought as he shuffled through the various contents. Dropping the man's credit card, license, and military I.D. without bothering to look at them, he finally found what he was looking for. Bucky shoved the RFID card and keys into his pocket and took up the roll of tape he'd left on the floor beside the rope. When the last guard had been tied up and the tape had been placed securely over his mouth, he stood to leave. He didn't bother with taking the rope and tape; he wouldn't need them anymore. He did, however, take care to move silently, just in case there were any others they'd missed, as he left the closet that had been half-filled with security guards. Closing the door, he moved down the hallway.

The fight with the guards had taken next to no time. They weren't anywhere near the quality of thug he normally had to fight, though he'd actually been a little impressed. For a bank headquarters the guards were fairly competent. They'd had an efficient fighting style that made sense when Bucky'd found the last man's military ID. From the styles he'd studied, he'd say Marine. Again, he was impressed. He was also wondering why an already heavily secured building needed such a forceful security detail. Bucky walked back to the door he needed and threw it open. The large screens in the room flashed with details that he didn't bother to pay attention to. Instead, he walked toward the red-head staring intently at the screens, lowered himself into a chair beside her, and kicked his feet up onto the desk beside her.

"Find it?" he asked.

"Yeah, but it's buried in a ridiculous amount of coding," Natasha replied. "How are the boys?"

"They'll wake up in a few hours wondering what they did to deserve this," he grinned. He pulled out the keys and card. "And one of em will be missing some things, but I've got an easier way out."

"That'll certainly help. It's nice when it's just a quiet in-and-out job like this," Natasha said. "No muss, no fuss."

"I'll say," Bucky agreed. "The guy I took these from, though? He's a Marine, or was a Marine, I think. Found military ID on him and his fighting style matched the tapes I've watched. Why the hell would a bank with the automated security this one has need military guards?"

"I was thinking that, too," Natasha replied. "The two I found were definitely Navy SEAL. It might not mean anything, though. A lot of vets have a hard time finding work when they get back. The bank may just be taking them on because of it."

Bucky sighed. "Man, if we're stealing from good guys, I'm gonna feel bad."

"We're not stealing information about the bank," Natasha reminded him. "We're stealing information about our bad guys _from_ the bank. There's a difference."

Bucky grinned at her. "I love it when you justify things. You're so good at it."

"I've had practice," she said, smiling but not looking at him. "After all, I've had to justify being with you for the last year."

"Ouch, that hurts, doll."

"Besides," she continued. "Maybe they thought they'd get a visit from the Avengers."

"Well, in that case, they need to try harder."

Natasha pulled the thumb drive from the port and finally turned to Bucky. "There. Done. Got everything we wanted."

They stood and Bucky offered her his arm. "Shall we?"

"We shall," she nodded, linking her arm through his. They walked out of the room and turned toward the door they'd entered that had locked behind them. Bucky took out the RFID card and scanned it. The door's lock snapped back with a quiet click and Bucky pulled it open.

"We should do this more often," Natasha mused. "It's nice; peaceful, with just enough fight to make it interesting."

"It is a little bit like a vacation."

Unfortunately, at that moment, all the lights in the hallway flashed off. The security lights lit up yellow and alarms started blasting from throughout the building.

"Damnit, Steve," Bucky sighed.

"Damnit, Steve," Natasha agreed.

The pair walked through the door and made their way toward the stairwell. The alarms meant the elevators would be out of commission, so their leisurely getaway was out the window. However, they didn't make any effort to rush down to their friends who were theoretically supposed to be keeping a quiet eye out on the ground floor.

Technically, Steve and Sam weren't even supposed to be there. They'd weaseled their way into the operation after Tony insisted on testing out a new attachment on his suit that ended up blowing a hole through Bruce's living room wall. Pretty much everyone had cleared out for a few hours after that. There was only one problem with Steve and Sam's plan to join them. Bucky had been an unofficial member of the Avengers for about fifteen months. His presence in the new Avenger's facility had been kept quiet. He'd spent the time training, getting comfortable around the others, and regaining what was still missing in his memory, but as far as the public and government were concerned, he was still frozen and protected in a hideout god-knows-where. Then about three months ago, they had all decided it was time for him to start going out on missions. This was the sixth he'd been out on. They were always quiet, easy jobs. He usually went with Natasha, but once he'd been out with Sam, and once with Wanda. He'd enjoyed this breaking-in period. It allowed him to see how each of them worked on missions, and so far it hadn't blown his cover. Between most of the Avengers, however, there had been an unspoken rule about who Bucky definitely would not go on missions with: Tony and Steve. Everyone knew that if they wanted Bucky's presence to remain a secret, sending him out with the hard-to-miss-or-indeed-ignore Iron Man was a terrible idea. Plus, those suits were built for one and Tony wasn't going to share.

Steve, on the other hand….

"He cannot help himself," Bucky complained. They'd found their way to the stairwell and were starting to hook up the rappelling systems to go down to the floor they needed. "Even when we were kids he had to cause a huge commotion, be flashy. Couldn't do anything quiet."

Natasha laughed.

"What, don't believe me?" Bucky asked.

"No, I do," she replied. "It's just that you sound like a crotchety old man right now, and I just remembered that you _are one_."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "You're hilarious."

"When we get down there are you gonna tell him to get off your lawn?" She asked as they climbed over the railing.

"What? We don't have a lawn."

"God, you're old," she said, leaning forward to give him a quick kiss before releasing the tension at her waist. Bucky followed just a second later. After unhooking themselves at the bottom, they left the stairwell to find their friends.

"They should be somewhere around here, the building's not that wide," Natasha muttered.

"We should have brought those coms," Bucky said. "I don't like them, but they make tracking each other much easier."

"True."

In the distance they heard a gun go off quickly followed by a familiar reverberation.

"Hey, you know what metal makes that sound?" Natasha asked as they set off to find at least one of their missing friends.

"It's brass, right," Bucky quipped back at her, grinning.

As they got closer to where they heard the gunshot, a gray-covered body flew from a side hallway followed by a blur of moss green as Steve Rogers followed. They pulled up short to keep from slamming into him.

"Hey, guys," Steve greeted them. "What took you so long?"

"We were taking a nap," Bucky replied. "What's going on here?"

"Can't you tell?" Steve asked, punching the guy when he tried to get up. "Picnic." The guy was down for good.

Bucky motioned to the man who was now lying unconscious on the floor. "You're date's a babe."

"Fellas," Natasha interrupted stepping around them and continuing down the hall. "Can we pick this up later when these alarms aren't alerting the entire city to our presence here?"

They shrugged and followed her. "What set off the alarms?" Bucky asked Steve.

"That guy, actually. He saw us and sent out an alert before we could stop him."

"Seriously? You were taken by surprise?"

Ahead of them, Natasha turned to shield herself from an attack from two men who appeared from a room off the side.

"He wasn't there before," Steve told him, his brow creasing.

"Wait," Bucky said as he grabbed a third guy. Grabbing him by the throat he pushed him back into the room he'd come from. Steve followed him through. They both knew Natasha didn't need them for two men. As Bucky slammed the guy clutched in his metal hand into the wall beside the door, he turned to take in the situation. They seemed to be standing in the building's control room. In the middle of the room was Sam Wilson, wings on back, vibranium shield in hand, and a white star surrounded by blue on his chest. Around him were four more of the men, all dressed in the same gray uniform. Even as he watched, one broke off to block an attack from Steve. Bucky turned his attention back to the man he was holding in place.

With all four of them there, it took little more than five minutes to deal with the rest of the men. Brushing his hair out of his eyes, Bucky spotted a box that looked like the likely culprit of the control panel for the alarm that was still blaring. He walked over to inspect it and Natasha followed.

"Here," she said to him. "It's probably hooked into a computer. I can just…"

Bucky punched his metal fist into the panel causing it to short circuit and the alarm faded away until there was silence.

"Or that," she finished.

"This is a big building, but is it normal for one corporation to have this many guards on staff at one time?" Sam asked, hooking the shield across his back on the bar that'd been fitted to his wings.

"No, it's not," Natasha confirmed. "These aren't guards, though."

"Yeah," Bucky added. "Different uniforms. The others were in blue and they all had logos on them. These guys don't."

"Then why did the alarms start off," Steve wondered. "And where's the backup. It hasn't arrived yet."

"These are maybe all questions we ask when we're out of here," Sam suggested.

They started to make their exit.

"What were you saying before," Bucky asked Steve. "Why you didn't see them."

"It's not that I didn't see them," Steve said. "They weren't there. I looked into a room that had no closets and no other ways in. It was clear. Two minutes later, three of those men come out of it."

He pointed to the hallway they'd first found him in. "That room." They looked down the hallway across from it where they'd left the man Steve had punched out. He wasn't there.

"What the hell?" Bucky asked. "No way was he getting up that soon."

Natasha turned and ran back to the control room and Steve started toward the room he pointed out to them.

"Guys," she shouted to them. "We have a problem."

They all hurried back and looked into the room.

"Where the fuck did they go?" Bucky asked.

Not a single body was left in the room.

"Okay," Sam said. "This is all very creepy, but it doesn't change the fact that we all need to get outta here before someone does show up. Even if by accident at this point."

"You got it, Captain." Steve nodded at him.

"Don't call me that," Sam muttered.

"Boys," Natasha interrupted. "Must we do this again?"

They passed the elevator, but Bucky stopped and went back when he noticed the RFID reader tucked in a nook beside the up and down arrows. The reader beeped and the doors opened smoothly.

"Elevator, guys," Buck called to them. "This is the one we saw up on the roof." They piled in and after another swipe of the card they were moving upward, enjoying security access to the top of the roof. As the doors opened, they saw the waiting helicopter with three of Stark's sentries standing guard around it and the doors they came in through.

"Time to go home," Steve told the sentries who all unfroze and took off.

Natasha climbed into the cockpit and the others took seats in back.

"We sorta do have to talk about it, Nat," Steve started. "He's Captain America now."

"I'm Captain sometimes," Sam argued.

"You're Cap a lot," Bucky added, raising his brows and nodding at him.

"So I get to call you Captain," Steve continued.

"Boys," Natasha called over the noise of the blades. "Stop your arguing or I'll turn this thing around. Ya know, metaphorically."

Thirty seconds later they were heading back home hoping that Tony hadn't blown it up too much.

* * *

Thank you for reading my story! I hope you enjoyed it. I'm not sure what my updating schedule will look like because I've got uni classes and work but I'll try to get chapters out as quickly as possible.


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